Japanese Literature discussion

I thought it might be useful to have a thread for mod notes and forum Q&A.
The GR j-lit forum has been ongoing for more that 15 years. There have been multiple moderators and several, having done their time, are still forum members after many. many years of supporting the group.

We have been looking at ways to improve the forum for all of us who appreciate Japanese literature, along with the arts, culture and history of Japan.

Goodreads recently changed how it handles notification and emails. Multiple forums, including ours, have struggled a bit to get used to the changes. Also, since I am the most junior of the moderators, I still have occasional training wheel events.

Please post questions, suggestions, comments to this thread, especially on how we can improve the forum for all of us.

There were a couple of additions to the forum in the last few months.
1) Separate folder for Manga so that novels/novellas could be discussed separately. I will continue to build that out. It was started with the some history, genres, and the initial discussion area.
2) Author profiles for reference and discussion. I am trying to add along with our group read each month.
3) Translator profiles for reference and discussion. I am trying to add along with our group read each month.

Although our big yearly “challenge” is Japan in January (along with a number of other literary sites, we have tried a few fun challenges like “cat week”. These seem to be of interest for the forum members.

Though we share an interest in Japanese Literature, we all do not read the same things. So take the challenges you find fun or interesting. Suggest others. We have a suggestion of equal time for inu (dogs) so maybe in 2025.

Non-fiction group read: we have had both group and buddy non-fiction reads in the past. There have been requests to formalize that and try a non-fiction group read for those on the forum that enjoy Japan related non-fiction.

Holiday season j-lit children’s books. I posted a starting list here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
This is to help with our inner child (Jack-San is talking about Jack here) or a a potential gift guide. I try to order a few j-lit children’s books for our family collection every year.

Thanks for starting this thread, Jack.

We will have a non-fiction selection for Jan 2025. It will also count for “January in Japan 2025” as will either of the fiction novels that were voted on for January. The GR Haruki Murakami Fans group will also be reading The City and Its Uncertain Walls at the same time as us. (A few of us are members in both groups.)

We have suggestions to try a manga and a light novel group read in 2025 so we will try those out also in addition to our fiction reads.

With more than 4500 members, we have various likes in j-lit and the group is here to support our diverse interests in j-lit.

Respectfully yours, your moderators.

January in Japan 2025 is the 18th year of the annual event that many literature sites participant in. It was started and has been led by Dolce Bellezza. See: https://dolcebellezza.blogspot.com/
They are also a member of this forum and we greatly appreciate the work that they have done through the years in promoting this event.

Other leads of literary hubs also participate in this event including our Alison (co-mod of this forum), see: https://readjapaneseliterature.com/,
and Emma of Words and Peace, see: https://wordsandpeace.com/.

This challenge will be a great start to 2025.
Regards and happy holidays to all,
Jack

Use of spoiler tags in GR.

GR has spoiler tags to hide a section of text.
It looks like this:
(view spoiler)[ test line (hide spoiler)]
“<“ “spoiler“ “>” at start of section
“<“ “/“ “spoiler” “>” at end of section

On the GR apple app it comes out “[spoilers removed]”
I will ask about the android app…

Thank you for the notes to let me know that
the poll at the bottom of the _web_ page is _not_ visible to app users. I added the link to the poll at the end of the nomination thread and also sent it back to folks that messaged me directly.
r/Jack

From our Japanese Light Novel partner group:
The August 2025 group read is The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold to Another Kingdom (Light Novel) Vol. 1 by Fuyutsuki Koki. This is a delightful light novel series and, if you enjoy it, it was animated and had a complete series in Summer 2025. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Also their Sept/Oct 2025 Nomination thread is now open. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

We are always looking to improve our nomination and voting process and have tried several ways including general message notification and in-group notification on the forum.

It is a little awkward now that the member-to-member messaging function though we do get discussion on our parallel discord channel.

If you have any thoughts on improvements, please post to this thread.

Thank you, Jack and your moderators.

Thank u Jack 🙇🏻‍♀️
Can u post the link to the Discord channel? Never used Discord before (🥸) but would like to take a look.

One improvement I think could be made, in the interest of diversity, are two disqualifications for nomination:
- books we've covered in the past - those threads remains open in the event people want to discuss them,
- authors who have been covered within the past 2 years - 3/14 books between May 2025 and July 2026 have been/will be by Uketsu, and 2 by Tsujimura Mizuki.

runa wrote: "Thank u Jack 🙇🏻‍♀️
Can u post the link to the Discord channel? Never used Discord before (🥸) but would like to take a look."

ok, I will ask to get an updated discord link... then I will post on this thread

Laurel wrote: "One improvement I think could be made, in the interest of diversity, are two disqualifications for nomination:
- books we've covered in the past - those threads remains open in the event people wa..."

I asked the other moderators and several of the long term members and they all agree that there should be a reread limit of between 3 to 5 years since the threads are kept open. (there are new members coming in regularly so there was some thought about not ever repeating a book but that there should be a time limit... we are not restricted to only one book a month in the event of a repeat - even with a multiyear trigger)

I will also ask about the author suggestions. I think there are two possible areas, 1) additional books in a series, or 2) repeating the same author multiple times in a short period... I will get feedback on that.

thanks for the suggestions so far.
Friends and members, please keep thinking about improvements.

-Jack

It seems to me that if we elect the first book in a series or if sequels come out thereafter, people can discuss the sequels in the same thread we used for the first book. No need to nominate sequels; discussion just continues as long as the series lasts.

I'd rather not overly restrict authors we've read recently. Perhaps 'no author who won this poll may be nominated in the next one"?